Category Archives: Unsolved

376K: Teens with Powers

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If I had to classify it, Young Adult fiction would be the genre, but it may just be broader fiction with a mostly teenage main cast.
I don’t remember much about the main character but he has some sort of power that I believe awakens, and he ends up on the run. He eventually comes across a mysterious girl and her relative (grandfather, I think) who rescues him and comes along with him. This girl seems to be able to see the future, and knows about him and that they will eventually be married.  I also believe that she can talk to animals, though this may not be the case. Her grandfather has trained her to fight and specifically talks about fortifying the house they were staying at with steel embedded in the door, before the government( or some evil corporation potentially) comes to get them.
I believe neat the end they find yet another youth who has powers, and end up infiltrating some sort of cult compound.
I’m pretty sure that it’s a relatively recent book, maybe 5 years old at most, because the sequel hadn’t been released yet, or it may have been a one off, I’m not sure.

376G: Old Book

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Probably published in the 1950s or even the late ’40s.  Maybe in Britain or Canada.
Children’s fantasy/detective story

Plot: A single (gasp!) mother (probably a war widow) with 2 kids, a boy and a girl.  She is being courted by the neighbourhood beat cop.  The kids want to buy her something special for her birthday and they have saved their allowance so they have enough to buy her a small second-hand radio.  The kids know she loves music and dancing.  Kids find out later that radio is magic and broadcasts crimes in progress, which they , of course, try to stop/solve, and get their bacon saved by the cop character. I know this is a faint, faint hope. But it was such a change from Dick and Jane, which I refused to read aloud, thus grade one ended with me being labelled as mentally deficient. It was astoundingly different from anything else I ever saw until I was in my teens.Best of Luck to you – and for me!

376F: A Brother and Sister and their Cat

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Three short stories about two children and their cat. They are a brother and sister. In one story, the cat eats all their aunt’s goldfish, one at a time on successive visits to her house, and they manage to gradually replace them one at a time so that she never realizes. In another story, burglars break into the children’s house when they’re home alone and the cat scares them away. My grandmother bought this book for me in the mid-80s. I believe the format is somewhat taller and narrower than a standard book. It has illustrations throughout, they are sketchy black and white, possibly with touches of red, blue and yellow. Not sure whether it would be classified as a picture book or an early reader.

376E: A talking horse and an aloe plant

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Looking for a slim paperback from the 80s. It might have been from either Starbooks or Scholastic Book Club. Written at the early reader level, a little less than a full chapter book. Set in the American West. A boy goes to a livestock auction and encounters a horse who can talk. He’s a recently captured mustang who wants to rejoin his herd. He persuades the boy to buy him and they become friends but the horse always wants to return to the wild. Somehow the boy smashes his mom’s potted aloe plant, which she needs to treat a burned hand. The horse offers a deal where he will show the boy where to find one growing in the wild in exchange for his freedom. They make a secret journey into the wilderness at night to find the plant. I think the title is something obvious like “The Horse Who Could Talk” but I can’t find anything online.

376D: Farm Book

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The book is about a family living on a ranch/farm in the American West, sometime between 1970 and 2000. I remember three key details about the book: 

A. The families father was killed by a bull during a rodeo. He was gored to death.

B. At one point in the book, a member of the family is in the hospital with a boy who lost his leg to a lawnmower accident. His siblings visit in the hospital and say they are not allowed anywhere near the lawnmower. The boy is in the hospital to get a larger prosthetic leg attached. 

C. The children live on a ranch/farm and often play in a pasture near the house. They go there to hide at one point, but I do not remember why. 

376B: Book about a Southern family

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The book I am searching for may be from late nineteen forties through early sixties. The mother of two (a high-school boy and a married daughter) is the main character. The daughter, named Tilghman, has her first baby near the end of the story. Then the main character, now a grandmother, finds out she is expecting!